picture window # 18 ~ it's cold outside
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 at 08:45AM 
Fresh snow and bone-chilling cold • click to embiggenSome say that the act of making a picture removes one from the experience of the moment. Those who think so are heard to proclaim that, on occasion, they put aside the camera in order to more fully experience whatever moment it is with which they are engaged.
This notion has always left me a bit puzzled because I have never really felt that particular conflict of interest. I suppose that is because I don't make a big deal out of the simple act of making a picture - bring camera to eye, adjust exposure if needed, look, and press the shutter release, return to "reality". How hard is that?
And, if your looking comes in the form of being really attentive to your surroundings, how the hell can a heightened state of awareness detract from a given moment?
Although, it does seems to me that most who are picturing / experiencing conflicted are those whose looking is bloated with thinking. That is, thinking about things photographic - looking for leading-lines, thinking about composition, et al (aka, the rules) - in short thinking about what kind of picture you are trying to make.
For me, thinking instead of looking ruins everything - it ruins both the moment and the chances of making a good picture. Ansel-the-Magnificent said it best:
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs
It has been opined by some that the "rules for making good photographs" are, in fact, little more than after-the-fact extrapolations made from good pictures. To be totally cynical about it, that could mean that those who are the keepers of the faith in the "rules" just make up rules after seeing a good picture in order to create a "good-picture" making coda for those without imagination who wish to repeat the already observed fact.
IMO, the single most destructive notion to the act of making good pictures is to fall victim to the idea that "you need to learn the rules before you can break the rules", which, IMO, is akin to the need to spend a year in a Nike sweatshop making sneakers before you start working on your jump shot. And, just to make matters worse, keep thinking about that year making sneakers every time you attempt a jump shot.
Reader Comments (4)
Well written! Thinking vs. doing, that is the question. (Was there a question?)
The rules you talk about are what I call "the magazine tips and tricks to better landscape photography". These alway seem to be the tips to dull and cliched landscape photography. I'm not design hostile. I went to design school. But tips and trick and compositional rules are not design. Visual design is the understanding of how the human mind sees and organizes visual information and using that knowledge in an organic manner to create organization (which is what the mind does, if you fight it you make uncomfortable design, it is not whole and complete) and meaning (sometimes meaning is created by not being whole and complete. This is obviously (to a designer) an organic process. A couple of rules only interferes.
My favorite rule to break is the "don't center the subject". I love to do it because your not supposed to do it. I love to take pictures of things I'm not supposed to, just see my Yellowstone and Teton pics. But it is also a great device to say look at this, to shove it I your face.
I guess maybe I am glad I never went to a photography school so I can be photographically challenged and do things my own stupid way. At least I am having fun.
I came to a realization along these lines when I was out for a postprandial stroll with the family after Christmas. I had long held this idea that there were times when we needed to get out from behind the lens to experience some things more fully. But returning from our walk, I was happy to have come away with no photographs at all. It dawned on me that photography was more a result of viewing things, and some days I may not be seeing things that I want ot put in a picture.
I think there are many (the "serious amateur" crowd mostly, and I supposed I'd lump myself in there) who go out with the express notion of making pictures. Not even necessarily by the rules. But we get too wound up in the act of picturing that actually we aren't seeing so much of the world.
The trick is to make photography a reaction to just seeing stuff, rather than seeing stuff as a means to make pictures.